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BF 1156 
.S8 F6 
Copy 1 



Price, Ten Cents 



Location 
During Sleep 



BY 

Sydney Flower, LL. D. 

Editor "Journal of Suggestive Therapeutics* * 



JMSb 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

56 FIFTH AVENUE 



I 



I 



EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 



BY 



Sydney Flower, LL. D. 

Editor 
Journal of Suggestive Therapeutics 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H KERR & COMPANY 

56 Fifth Avenue 






1598 

Copyright 1898 
By Sydney Flower 

tW ° VEO. 




Unity Library, No. 82. Monthly, $3.00 a year. May, 18 

Entered at the Postoffice. Chicago, as second class matter. 






EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 



Little more than a year ago the attention of psy- 
chologists in America was first called to the develop- 
ment of a new agency in education — viz., the extraor- 
dinary power of a person in a condition of natural 
sleep to accept suggestions or ideas impressed upon 
his mind during that sleep. 

The general opinion is that a person asleep is, for 
the time trying, dead to the world, but a knowledge of 
the extreme wakefulness of the subconscious mind 
should make us careful of what we say in the presence 
of the sleeper. 

The process of education, and of curing certain dis- 
eases, during natural sleep, was first detailed by me in 
an article published a year ago in the journal then 
known as the Hypnotic Magazine, now the Journal of 
Suggestive Therapeutics. Some comment was cre- 
ated at the time of the appearance of the article, and 
since then several experiences, bearing out the results 
claimed, have been published. First, a mother an- 
nounced that ehe had cured her child of a minor com- 

5 



6 EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 

plaint bv talking to the little one during her sleep at 
night. Then followed accounts of experiments of a 
similar nature, conducted by parents, by means of 
which idle and disobedient children were rendered 
industrious and obedient, without punishment — with- 
out censure — simply by suggesting to the children 
that the old habits were put aside and that hence- 
forth they would be unattractive. 

Quite recently, Dr. Paul Farez has written an arti- 
cle in the Eevue de PHypnotisme, Paris, the great 
authority upon matters of psychological import, set- 
ting forth his opinion that suggestion during natural 
sleep is superior in efficacy to hypnotic suggestion in 
the treatment of mental diseases, and giving examples 
of cures made in some cases of insanity by himself 
with this method. 

Suggestion during natural sleep is thus attaining a 
world-wide significance. To give all the facts of re- 
search is a long story, and difficult to condense, but 
perhaps I can make plain the salient points of this 
treatment; the reason why; the results to try for, and 
how to proceed. When the simplicity of this process 
is understood there will be no hesitation in adopting 
it, and it may thus do much good. 

Why should an idea suggested during sleep have 



EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 7 

more weight than the same idea impressed upon the 
waking mind? Surely, because during sleep the con- 
sciousness is narrowed down to a point of concentra- 
tion that is rarely arrived at during the waking state. 
The sleeping, or subconscious mind is receptive, be- 
cause it is fixed upon a single idea. There is not dif- 
fusion of attention, as in the waking state. Useful 
education is simply the engrafting of certain ideas 
upon the mind, and the evil form is simply the oppo- 
site. In the first case an improvement in the form of 
knowledge is the result; in the latter case there is also 
knowledge, but scarcely improvement. It is neces- 
sary, then, in order to break up the habit, to drive [ 
out, not the knowledge itself, for that cannot be done, 
but the attractiveness of the knowledge; to make it 
repellent, and to turn the thoughts of the child or / 
man to something higher. Good and evil are only 
t relative terms, and in this work, without regard to, or 
molestation of, any one's faith or religious belief, we 
go upon the principle that evil is by no means the 
natural heritage of the child. Evil to us is merely 
absence of good, or ignorance of good. An evil may, 
therefore, be voluntary or involuntary; its presence 
indicates absence of right thought. 

Children are trained to distinguish between good 



8 EDUCATION DUKING SLEEP 

and evil at an early stage in their careers by persua- 
sion, admonition, or punishment. But our present 
methods of education of the young result in the seri- 
ous blunder of impressing upon the child's mind that 
to do wrong is easy, whereas to do right is very hard. 
This is both unfortunate and untrue, because by the 
child both good and evil thoughts are acquired, not 
inherited. Having learned, however, that it is hard 
to do right, the child, like all other activities in 
nature, follows the line of least resistance, and forms 
bad habits. Evidently it would be wisdom to prevent 
the formation of bad habits, and thus avoid the after- 
necessity of correcting them, but, accepting the fact 
tha/t the habit is formed, let us see how it is generally 
checked. 

For illustration, here is a child, a girl, 7 years old, 
who bites her finger nails. Her mother rebukes her, 
perhaps punishes her, and thereafter, while in her 
mother's presence, she bites her nails no more. But 
when alone and plunged in abstraction the child will 
revert to the habit unconsciously; or, when alone, and 
free from observation, she will bite her nails because 
she knows she will not be found out. These are the 
two examples we need of voluntary and involuntary 
habit. Now, the mother, by her rebuke, has made an 



EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 9 

impression, but not a very deep one, upon the child's 
mind. The mother's views have been impressed upon 
the child, but the child's own powers have not been 
called into play to break the habit. The mistake lies 
there. Had the impression been deep enough in the 
first place, the view r s of the child would, of course, 
have been merged in the views of the mother, and the 
habit would have been broken, but it is well to re- 
member that our greatest ally in this work is the 
quickness of the child-mind to appropriate to itself, as 
a part of itself, a love of good and distaste for evil. 
The mother's suggestion to the child should, there- 
fore, have been, not a rebuke, but a positive sugges- 
tion, which would set up an entirely new train of 
thought such as: 

"You will not bite your finger nails again because 
you will not want to. It is not a nice habit, and you 
do not like to do it. You don't wish to do things 
like that." 

Then is established in the child the thought that 
she herself dislikes to bite her finger nails, and very 
naturally she will not do what she dislikes to do. 
This breaks the habit. 

The evident reply of the skeptic to this will be that 
the child will promptly answer, either to her mother 



10 EDUCATION' DTJKItfG SLEEP 

or to herself, that she "does like," and that the sug- 
gestion will have no weight on that account. But the 
skeptic's observation is superficial, because it is evi- 
dently merely a matter of driving into the child's 
mind the idea that "she doe? not like/' in place of the 
idea that "she does like." In other words, success or 
failure is determined only by the depth of the im- 
pression made, and it is imperative to know how the 
deep or permanent impression may best be made. 

To go back a moment to the first part of our illus- 
tration. I said that the child, during a period of ab- 
straction, would perhaps revert to the habit. This 
means that the mother's rebuke, while powerful 
enough to influence the waking mind of the child, 
was not powerful enough to impress the subconscious 
mind. During a reverie the child is oblivious to sur- 
roundings, and is only conscious of the workings of 
her imagination. She is in a waking dream. She 
has not quite lost touch with her suroundings, but 
her mind is busy with its own fancy and memory 
pictures, and the outer world is forgotten. During 
this reverie the subconscious mind is active and inde- 
pendent. It is attending to her breathing, to her 
footsteps, to the processes of digestion and assimila- 
tion, and to certain automatic actions, to-wit, to the 



EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 11 

performance of the act of biting the nails. Here, 
then, is the clue to the cure of the habit. The im- 
pression, to be effective, must be deep enough to reach 
the subconscious mind, in order that the habit may 
be neither voluntary nor involuntary. 

An almost identical condition prevails during sleep 
as during a reverie, that is to say, as regards mental 
action. The waking mind is passive or resting, while 
the subconscious is most active. We dream; we some- 
times talk in our sleep; we sometimes get up and move 
about; our dreams are influenced by our thoughts on 
going to bed; by the supper we have eaten, etc.; we 
are still in partial relation to waking life. 

The child's attention during sleep is fixed upon the 
dream-pictures evolved by herself. She is not, there- 
fore, at first in a condition to give heed to the spoken 
suggestion of her parent. It is necessary to gradually 
draw her attention away from her own field, and fix it 
upon the thought to be suggested. Naturally, if one 
were to speak sharply and loudly to the little sleeper, 
she would return at once to waking consciousness. 
That must be avoided. There are two conscious- 
nesses: The consciousness of waking life, and the 
consciousness of sleep. We desire to reach her sleep- 
consciousness, and the method to be pursued is as 



12 EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 

follows: Before the child goes to bed the mother is 
to say: 

"I shall talk to you to-night while you are asleep, 
and you will answer me without waking. You will 
hear me, and understand what I say, but you will not 
wake up." 

Children, as a rule, betray great interest in this ex- 
periment, and sometimes declare that they will keep 
awake "o* purpose;" but a child's sleep is sound and 
swift. After this preliminary preparation, and when 
the child is fast asleep, the mother must go to her and 
sit quietly by the bed for a few minutes, stroking the 
child's forehead. This will have the effect of accus- 
toming the sleeper to her presence, and the speech 
which follows will be less likely to disturb the 
slumber. 

Then begin the talk, the mother calling the child 
softly by name, and saying distinctly, but in a low 
tone: 

"This is mother talking to you. Sleep quietly. 
You must not wake. You can speak to me without 
waking. You are perfectly comfortable and quiet. 
Sleep sound. Do you hear me talking to you? Say 
yes. You will not wake up. Now I touch your lips 
with my finger, and you can speak. Say yes." 



EDUCATION DUBING SLEEP 13 

In many cases it is very difficult at the first attempt 
to get this answer from the child, but at the second or 
third it is easily given; generally with a long-drawn- 
out hissing sound that makes gravity difficult to sus- 
tain. Should the child stir uneasily, and open her 
eyes, the mother must not relinquish her attempt, but 
close the eyelids with her fingers, and suggest, "Sleep- 
ing quietly. Nothing will disturb you. You can 
hear me," etc. Then follow the special suggestions 
directed to the case; biting the nails, disobedience, 
idleness, untidiness, untruthfulness, or whatever the 
fault may be. They should be forcible, positive sug- 
gestions, couched in terms the child can readily un- 
derstand, thus: 

"You will remember what I say to you. You do 
not like to bite your nails. You will not wish to do it 
any more. It will be hateful to you. I want you 
now to promise me that you never will." 

Eepeat this once or twice, and the promise so given 
will be kept. 

Although it has nothing to do with curing a habit 
it may be well to give the outline of an experiment 
which will convince any mother that she can, by these 
means, enter into relationship with her child during 
the latter^ sleep. The experiment is a common one 



14 EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 

in suggestive therapeutics, but is probably new to 
most persons. When the child makes her answer, 
but not before, the mother may say, before proceeding 
with her suggestions: 

"Now^ you're going to have a lovely dream. It's a 
beautiful day, and the sun is shining, and you're so 
happy, because you're out in the woods picking flow- 
ers. See, here they are all around you. Violets, and 
great big primroses, and daisies, heaps of them. Now 
you're picking a large bunch to take home with you. 
Aren't they beautiful?" 

The child says, "S-s-s-s-s." The mother goes on: 

"You feel well and strong and happy. My little 
girl will wake up when I count three, and tell me all 
about h — where she's been, and what she's seen. 
Then she'll go fast asleep again, and she'll remember 
to bring a bunch of flowers home with her. One, 
two, three, wake up." 

The child wakes, puzzled, smiling, and seeing her 
mother, wonders. Then the dream memory comes to 
her, and she looks about for her flowers. Not finding 
them, she wonders again, but breaks forth suddenly 
into a narration of her dream, which is yet something 
more than a dream to her. It is curious to note that 
these suggested visions are far more intense than the 



EDUCATION DUKING SLEEP 15 

usual dream. Remember that the child has not been 
acting her dream; she has been lying perfectly still 
with her eyes shut, and sometimes only a change in 
the breathing will denote the images crowding her 
mind. Not until she wakes will the mother know 
how firm a hold the things she has said have taken 
upon the child's mind. 

You may gather from this how much a mother 
might do by directing her child's dreams during any 
sickness under which the latter might be suffering. 
How easily the fevered head might rest if the mothers 
knew how to put their children to sleep and how to 
talk to them while they were asleep. But these 
things are mysteries to most people. 

To continue the first experiment: On waking in 
the morning the child will have forgotten the whole 
matter. That simply means that it is not within the 
memory of the waking mind. But the necessary im- 
pression has been made upon the subconscious mind, 
and its effect will be noticed during the day. This 
treatment should be repeated every night for a week, 
but I have seen cures resulting from one treatment. 

Some readers may harbor the opinion that it will be 
sufficient for the mother to think these suggestions, 
without uttering them aloud. I am afraid I cannot 



16 EDUCATION DUBING BLEEP 

agree to this. Thought projecting, or telepathy, is a 
very doubtful and capricious agency, and not to be 
relied upon at all. It is necessary to secure the 
child's attention through the avenue of the physical 
sense of hearing, and to be assured of the child's at- 
tention by her word of mouth. Thought projecting 
seems to be about as useful in this connection as pray- 
ing for rain in a land where irrigation is a necessity, 
This work is wholly practical and takes nothing for 
granted. 

With regard to the application of this method of 
suggestion during natural' sleep to adults addicted to 
intemperance, I have not made any experiments along 
this line, because of lack of opportunity. But such a 
task might be safely undertaken by the wife, and it is 
very reasonable that as drunkenness may be cured by 
hypnotic suggestion, it may with equal certainty be 
the latter s subconscious mind, by his suggestions, an 
^ured by suggestion given during natural sleep. The 
antipathy to alcohol, and that is precisely what the 
wife might do by suggestion during natural sleep. 
There is one very important limitation to this method 
hypnotist does not, by his superior will power, mag- 
netism, or any nonsense of that kind, compel his pa- 
tient to abstain from drinking. He merely rouses in 



EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 17 

which must be regarded when dealing with an adult — 
namely, that a suggestion which is objectionable to 
the waking man will be objectionable to the sleeping 
man, and will not be accepted. Drunkenness and 
vicious habits are due to mental conditions, but they 
can be cured by suggestion only when the patient has 
fully agreed in his waking condition that he earnestly 
desires to be cured, but has not sufficient will power 
to break off. Suggestion will supplement his will 
power. It will be useless, therefore, for a devoted 
wife to approach her husband with a view to securing 
in this manner the price of a new bonnet, because the 
suggestion would not be regarded with favor. 

In just the same way as subconscious and conscious 
thought influence our actions, they influence the con- 
dition of the body; and there are many nervous dis- 
eases which can be cured by simple suggestion given 
during natural sleep. It is only necessary to call at- 
tention to the fact that a depressed condition of the 
mind will result in a morbid condition of the func- 
tions of the body to prove how near is the relation 
existing between mind and matter, and suggestion 
during natural sleep is very valuable in breaking up 
neuralgias, headaches, and all nervous irregularities 
of function. These things here spoken of are yet in 



18 EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 

their infancy, but they should be proclaimed upon 
the housetops. 

W. Xavier Sudduth, M. A., M. D., Belianee Build- 
ing, is a Chicago physician who has made an ex- 
haustive study of psychological subjects, and has pub- 
lished several theses upon the relation of mind to 
matter. "When asked for his opinion upon the value 
of education during natural sleep, Dr. Sudduth said: 

"I have been testing this agency for several years, 
and have found that suggestions given by the mother 
or nurse to a sick child during natural sleep have been 
most useful in assisting the usual medication to re- 
establish conditions of health. In one case the sug> 
gestions were given entirely by the nurse, and were 
successful in breaking up the distressing habit of 
enuresis from which so many children suffer. But 
especially in the correction of such habits as bad tem- 
per and insubordination in children is suggestion dur- 
ing natural sleep to be employed by parents or guar- 
dians. This is almost an unexplored field, but its 
importance can hardly be overestimated. Natural 
sleep is not a condition of insensibility to external im- 
pressions. It is rather a condition of inattention. 
The sleeper hears, but he does not heed. It is not 
difficult to introduce ideas to his consciousness which 



EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 19 

shall make a permanent and deep impression through 
his sleeping or subjective mind upon his objective or 
waking mind. This, in fact, suggestion during nat- 
ural sleep accomplishes; it makes a deep impression. 
I have not applied this method in the ease of grown 
persons, but under my direction the results attained 
by mothers in checking bad habits in children, upon 
whom no impression had been made by punishment 
or admonition in the waking state, have been most 
successful." 

From Albert H. Burr, M. D., adjunct professor of 
the practice of medicine, at the Chicago College of 
Physicians and Surgeons, a similar indorsement of 
this method of treating stubbornness and bad habits 
in children, and even the gravest mental irregulari- 
ties, was received. 

"It is most reasonable that the mind should be 
amenable to suggestion during natural sleep," said 
the doctor, "seeing that external suggestions are con- 
tinually modifying and varying the dreams of a 
sleeper. For instance, the striking of a clock is ac- 
cepted in a dream as the strokes of a church bell; a 
constrained position fixes the attention of the sleeper 
upon pains resulting therefrom, and a sense of pain in 
the limb affected is incorporated into the dream. 



20 EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 

These are simple every-day happenings, and they 
show those who heed the signs that the mind of the 
sleeper may be influenced both from within and from 
without. I have been working for some time along 
these lines, and believe that by suggesting a certain 
dream, for example, to an inebriate, a dream which 
would make a powerful impression upon his imagina- 
tion, we might succeed in instilling into his waking 
thought a dread and horror of alcohol. As a corrob- 
orative instance of this possibility, a patient whom I 
am now treating by suggestion for the cure of in- 
ebriety was actually broken of the habit of taking 
morphine by a dream. He dreamed that his mother's 
spirit stood by his bedside, and the effect upon him 
when he woke was such that from that time to the 
present he has not touched morphine. If a dream 
evolved by the sleeper himself has such power, how 
reasonable it is to assume that a dream suggested by 
some one in relationship with the sleeper would be 
equally effective, knowing, as we do, that we can hold 
the attention of sleeping persons by quiet speech, and 
that they will realize to an intense degree the vision 
suggested. 

"The efficiency of suggestion during induced sleep 
or hypnosis is an established fact, If, then, as Lie- 



EDUCATION* DURING SLEEP 21 

beault, the father of modern suggestive therapeutics, 
has often declared, 'induced sleep cannot be differen- 
tiated from natural sleep/ ft is quite fair to assume 
that impressions which can so readily be made in the 
one case are susceptible of being duplicated in the 
other, else we have in the converse a differential, and 
Liebeault's dictum is refuted. 

"Exactly the same phenomena are observed during 
the approach of sleep in either case. The loss of con- 
sciousness in varying degree; the suspension of the 
objective senses more or less complete; the inhibition 
of the will, reason and critical faculties are alike in 
both. 

"Our dreams, which impress themselves upon our 
conscious memory, are induced either by suggestion 
through influences affecting the sensory or sympa- 
thetic nervous systems, and hence objective or purely 
physical, or through impressions made on the wak- 
ing mind by the experiences of the day, and hence 
subjective or purely psychic. Uncomfortable dreams 
from which we wake in a fright (as from a nightmare) 
are always due to the discomforts of a headache, an 
overloaded stomach, intestinal or vesicle distress, a 
cramped position of body or limb or the memory of 
some unpleasant mental excitement. 



22 EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 

"Thus, too, pleasure as well as pain, physical or men- 
tal well-being as well as distress, are reflected in our 
dream-life as the result of suggestion. New hopes, 
ambitions and enterprises have been instituted by im- 
pressions made through dreams. We know of in- 
stances in which the subsequent life of the individual 
has been changed as the result of a vivid dream. We 
have often heard a man of our acquaintance relate 
how he was turned from a wayward life by the im- 
pressions of a dream. 

"It must not be inferred that we subscribe to dream 
books or pay any heed to their superstitious interpre- 
tations, but dreams have a rational cause and do make 
psychic impressions which react suggestively for good 
or evil on the mental, moral and physical sides of life. 

"If during induced sleep or hypnosis the imaginative 
faculty of the mind can be so strongly impressed as to 
abate pain impressions, regulate disturbed functions 
and overcome distressing habits, facts which have 
been demonstrated in thousands of instances by care- 
ful observers, is it not fair to assume by analogy that 
similar results can be obtained by a suggestive control 
of the dream faculty or imagination of normal sleep? 
All who have had experience in suggestive thera- 
peutics know how the patient, waking from the in- 



EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 23 

duced sleep, often' recalls the impressions made by the 
operator as those of a seeming dream. 

"The possible advantage suggestions may have in 
induced sleep over natural sleep is the known relation 
of the subject to the operator and the previous under- 
standing of both as to the object to be obtained, and 
hence the expectancy and increased susceptibility to 
the impressions resulting therefrom. This, however, 
may be overcome in a great measure by instructing 
the patient beforehand that after he has fallen into 
natural sleep the operator will come to him, and that 
he will remain asleep while he makes the suggestions 
which will be remembered and be effective in the cure 
of his ailment. 

"This opens up a large field for useful experiment, 
especially for the correction of bad habits, mental 
moral or physical, among children, a field where sug- 
gestive measures may be safely used by parents, teach- 
ers, governesses and nurses, as no training is required 
for the induction of hypnotic states, and which does 
not involve ignorant and meddlesome efforts to cure 
diseases whose treatment should be left to the skill of 
the medical profession. To the editor of the Journal 
of Suggestive Therapeutics is due the credit of having 
first directed attention to the possibilities for good by 



24 EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 

suggestions given during natural sleep, and its dem- 
onstration by actual proofs. It is to be hoped the re- 
sults will be far-reaching in their benefits." 

Dr. H. I. Howard of Portland, Oregon, has also 
investigated the claims w r e put forward as to the 
effectiveness of suggestion during natural sleep, and 
reports as follows: 

"The mind of an infant is like a sheet of white wax, 
ready to receive and retain every impression made 
upon it by the stylus of time. The child's entire 
knowledge of the external world is obtained through 
the five senses, and having no means of judging of 
the value of the sensations received, are all alike 
accepted and recorded as true. As the child grows 
older the reasoning faculties gradually develop and 
begin to pass judgment upon the impressions re- 
ceived, but faith and unquestioning belief are still 
marked attributes of the child mind. Hence, chil- 
dren are eminently suggestible. 

"This is true of the waking state, and during sleep, 
when the reasoning powers are entirely quiescent, the 
suggestibility is increased. As children do not read- 
ily awaken when spoken to, an excellent oportunity 
is afforded for treatment by suggestion, which experi- 
ence has shown to be equally effective in natural sleep 
as in the hypnotic state. 



EDUCATION DUKItfG SLEEP 25 

"In June, 1897, 1 commenced to treat my little boy, 
then two and a half years old, for incontinence of 
urine, diurnal and nocturnal. Like the climate of 
Oregon, he was constantly and continuously wet. The 
first suggestions, given just after he went to sleep, 
were immediately effective, and he slept dry for the 
first time. The good effect continued the next day 
and night, but there was a relapse on the third night, 
due to his being up late. After that there was no 
more trouble. 

"Occasional lapses have occurred at long in- 
tervals, but always due to some exciting cause. The 
suggestions were given in a low tone of voice, telling 
him first that it was his papa talking to him and he 
must not wake up, that he was sleeping soundly and 
would not wake up while papa was talking. Then 
followed the particular suggestions that he would not 
wet the bed, and would always wake up and call 
mamma when he wanted to relieve himself. Direc- 
tions were also given as to his conduct during the 
day, and the treatment was brought to a close by tell- 
ing him to sleep soundly all night. After the first 
few days he always awakened about ten o'clock and 
called his mother to take him up. 

"A few months after this he commenced to stam- 



26 EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 

mer, but the incipient habit was quickly checked by 
suggestion. 

"One ether habit remained for correction, that of 
thumb-sucking. This had been formed when he was 
only a few months old, and was indulged in whenever 
his attention was not otherwise engaged, and invaria- 
bly on going to sleep. 

"Occasional suggestions had broken him of the 
habit in the daytime, but he insisted that he could not 
go to sleep without sucking his thumb. On his third 
birthday I took the matter up in earnest, and gave 
him a series of vigorous suggestions, telling him that 
he was getting such a big boy that he did not like to 
suck his thumb any more, that he could go to sleep 
without sucking it, and particularly that it did not 
taste good any more. This last suggestion was sup- 
plemented by painting the thumb with an acid solu- 
tion once or twice, and the treatment was entirely 
successful after the third night. About a week after 
there was a slight relapse, noticed when he was half 
awake in the morning, but a few more suggestions 
checked it, and since then there has been no tendencv 
to suck the thumb at any time. 

"In suggestion during sleep we have a valuable 
method oi training for children, and I am satisfied 



EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 27 

that tendencies of any kind can be fostered or eradi- 
cated by its use. 

"It is a subject that should be brought to the atten- 
tion of every mother and father in the land." 

The experience of these gentlemen is strikingly 
corroborative of the claims which have been put for- 
ward in the first part of this treatise, and it remains 
now but to add a few words upon the reasonableness 
of the theory: 

Induced sleep and natural sleep are the same, yet 
not the same. There is one important point of dis- 
tinction between these two states. 

It is the law of natural sleep that the child is in 
relationship with himself alone. 

It is the law of induced sleep that the child is in 
relationship with the parent. 

During natural sleep the child is inattentive; dur- 
ing induced sleep he is attentive. 

It does not weaken this position to admit that there 
are exceptions in both cases; that sometimes the per- 
son who has passed into a state of natural sleep enters 
spontaneously into relationship with others, as in 
those cases where sleepers may be drawn into con- 
versation by cautious speech; or that it occasionally 
happens that the child who has been put to sleep by 



28 EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 

the parent passes from a condition of attention to one 
of inattention. The law holds good in spite of these 
exceptions, and with a proper understanding of the 
law firmly held, we can appreciate the fact that nat- 
ural sleeep may, under proper guidance, change from 
a condition of inattention into a condition of atten- 
tion. 

Now we go a step further and assert that unless 
the sleeper becomes attentive, suggestive treatment 
in natural sleep is ineffective and useless. The parent 
must be assured by word of mouth that the child is 
no longer busied with his own fancies and dream- 
pictures. He must be assured that suggestions are 
not only heard, but are understood, realized, become 
fact, in the sleeper's mind. There is an easy way by 
which the parent may satisfy himself that what he 
says will be not only heard but heeded by the sleeper, 
viz.: After receiving a response from the lips of the 
sleeper, the parent should take hold of the hand lying 
nearest to him and raise the arm of the sleeper, say- 
ing: "Your arm will stay in the position in which I 
place it. It will not feel fatigued. It will stay 
where it is put." Hold the arm in the air for a few 
seconds, repeating these suggestions, and then let go. 
If it stays as put the sleeper's attention is fixed upon 



EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 29 

the parent. If it falls there is a condition of weari- 
ness present which prevents the suggestion from tak- 
ing firm hold of the mind, and other suggestions 
given will be equally ineffective. Therefore it is well 
to repeat this experiment, and the suggestions given, 
until the fixation of the arm in the air attests the 
fixation of the attention of the sleeper. When this 
occurs the sleeper has passed into the same mental 
condition as prevails during induced sleep, i. e., he is 
in relationship with the parent. 

Now he both hears and heeds. 

Why is it that suggestions thus given have a power 
which is denied the same suggestions given to the 
same person while the latter is in his waking state? 
Simply because the auto-suggestion or opposing 
thought of the sleeper is in abeyance. Criticism is 
absent. The parent secures attention, passivity and 
receptivity. The mind of the sleeper is more plastic $ 
than the mind of the person awake; and it is more 
plastic because of the absence of critical thought plus 
the full attention given to the parent. Note here the 
Law of Education. 

Education is effective when this condition of mind 
prevails in the waking man, i. e., when the person 
being taught gives his whole attention to the lesson 



30 EDUCATION DURING SLEEP 

and checks his auto-suggestion he becomes receptive 
to the lesson. So in sleep, the person to be impressed 
by suggestion must be attentive to the speaker. Sug- 
gestive treatment is educational treatment most fa- 
vorably applied. Sleep is a powerful assistant and 
we should at all times make use of sleep, that the 
mind of the person to be treated may be as wax to re- 
ceive impressions. The success of a suggestion de- 
pends upon the depth of the impression made upon 
the mind of the recipient. Sleep favors the making 
of a deep impression, therefore sleep favors success. 

Of all methods of treating bad habits in children 
there is none that can compare with this, since it puts 
in the hands of the parents themselves the means 
whereby their children may be reclaimed or improved. 



THE END. 



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HOW TO HYPNOTIZE. 

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